I am on the verge of buying a gaming laptop - either an Sager NP9170 with a Radeon HD 7970M or an ASUS G75VW with an nVidia GeForce GTX 670M - in order to enjoy the benefits of a high performance GPU. However, I must confess that I am not really a gamer, but merely a photographer looking for a mobile solution for working with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and eventually video editing when I can afford to move up to the Nikon D800 from my D300!
Yes, they're both excellent GPUs, so perhaps you're wondering what my dilemma might be? Well, according to Adobe, the "Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) is new to Photoshop CS6 and uses both the OpenGL and OpenCL frameworks. It does not use the proprietary CUDA framework from nVidea." Besides the fact that I'm also getting ready to upgrade to Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4, I'm confused by the fact that nVidea's Quadro GPUs, which are ostensibly optimized for computational graphics type applications (including Photoshop), also specify CUDA Cores as the basis of their performance excellence.
The GTX 670M processor specifies 336 CUDA Cores, which is the same as nVidea's Quadro 4000M GPU, though the 4000M has a greater memory interface (256bit vs. 196bit) and memory bandwidth (80GB/sec vs. 72GB/sec). I don't understand why the Quadro GPUs will perform well with Adobe applications when they are based on the same CUDA framework as nVidea GeForce GPUs?
AnandTech's recent news article about nVidea's release of OEM GeForce GTX 660 products lists "Stream Processor" specifications for GTX 660 - GTX 680 desktop GPUs instead of CUDA CORES. All GPU specifications from nVidea's GeForce website list only CUDA Cores, whether GT, GTX, or Quadro products. What am I missing or not understanding?
Of course, Stream Processors bring us to the AMD Radeon GPUs, which Adobe applications appear to support wholeheartedly! The specifications for the Radeon HD 7970M closely approximate the specifications of AMD's FirePro W7000 Professional Graphics, and the 7970M supports OpenGL 4.2, OpenCL 1.2, AMD's latest GCN architecture, and a ton of the latest audio/video standards and advanced technologies.
On paper, the HD 7970M GPU should be the obvious choice for my primary applications, and I understand that it's a damn fine performer with current games; however, from what I can discern, AMD's Enduro GPU switching technology (Ivy Bridge processors - integrated to dedicated) is problematic, and AMD's driver support for their consumer GPUs is reputed to be poor, if not completely unresponsive! While nVidea's Optimus switching technology seems to work as advertised, it is not clear to me if AMD's Enduro switching issues are only related to games or also come into play with professional graphics apps, especially Adobe applications.
So, I would greatly appreciate any insights, advice, or recommendations that this forum's membership might offer, especially if you are a graphics professional using AMD or nVidea consumer GPUs.
Yes, they're both excellent GPUs, so perhaps you're wondering what my dilemma might be? Well, according to Adobe, the "Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) is new to Photoshop CS6 and uses both the OpenGL and OpenCL frameworks. It does not use the proprietary CUDA framework from nVidea." Besides the fact that I'm also getting ready to upgrade to Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4, I'm confused by the fact that nVidea's Quadro GPUs, which are ostensibly optimized for computational graphics type applications (including Photoshop), also specify CUDA Cores as the basis of their performance excellence.
The GTX 670M processor specifies 336 CUDA Cores, which is the same as nVidea's Quadro 4000M GPU, though the 4000M has a greater memory interface (256bit vs. 196bit) and memory bandwidth (80GB/sec vs. 72GB/sec). I don't understand why the Quadro GPUs will perform well with Adobe applications when they are based on the same CUDA framework as nVidea GeForce GPUs?
AnandTech's recent news article about nVidea's release of OEM GeForce GTX 660 products lists "Stream Processor" specifications for GTX 660 - GTX 680 desktop GPUs instead of CUDA CORES. All GPU specifications from nVidea's GeForce website list only CUDA Cores, whether GT, GTX, or Quadro products. What am I missing or not understanding?
Of course, Stream Processors bring us to the AMD Radeon GPUs, which Adobe applications appear to support wholeheartedly! The specifications for the Radeon HD 7970M closely approximate the specifications of AMD's FirePro W7000 Professional Graphics, and the 7970M supports OpenGL 4.2, OpenCL 1.2, AMD's latest GCN architecture, and a ton of the latest audio/video standards and advanced technologies.
On paper, the HD 7970M GPU should be the obvious choice for my primary applications, and I understand that it's a damn fine performer with current games; however, from what I can discern, AMD's Enduro GPU switching technology (Ivy Bridge processors - integrated to dedicated) is problematic, and AMD's driver support for their consumer GPUs is reputed to be poor, if not completely unresponsive! While nVidea's Optimus switching technology seems to work as advertised, it is not clear to me if AMD's Enduro switching issues are only related to games or also come into play with professional graphics apps, especially Adobe applications.
So, I would greatly appreciate any insights, advice, or recommendations that this forum's membership might offer, especially if you are a graphics professional using AMD or nVidea consumer GPUs.
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